SubscribeAs reported by Techcrunch, Cyworld US has finally launched a beta site. I’ve mentioned Cyworld before here. There’s not much to say but after reading the comments on Techcrunch, it seems pretty aligned with my take. The majority of the US audience won’t find it as “cool” as the Koreans and probably won’t be as successful in the US, just like MySpace won’t find success in Korea. And if you design for the US, why can’t you design to work with different browsers, like Firefox.? At the time of this writing, I’ve gotten as far as validating my email address and can’t even access my minihome as the Cyworld US would refer it.
As for acorns, good to see it in US but how do we get more? (I did a quick skim on the site but no luck) Because in Korea, you can get acorns (or dubbed OK Cash Back) from just about anywhere, like purchasing chips, coffee, milk or any other items. Just call a number and register and bingo, you have more acorn! How convenient! Or you can get Cyworld Items, like backgrounds, couch, whatever, from buying beer at the local and always friendly convenient stores.
I personally dig the avatars, the cuteness, at least those from the Korean market and I would love it if they would hook up all the different Cyworlds together, the it’ll be a real happy social network. I really dislike this limitation.
I really like to see them succeed here, they offer more (at least for me) than MySpace and other social networks in the US. Their acorn system is cool (only in Korea), if they can implement them here, more or less the same as Korean’s model, it would be neat. But what may work in one market won’t necessarily work in another. I’ll have to wait and see.
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